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Ponies & Tranquility, Jane Austen's New Forest
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July 29, 2011 |
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Trees in thick green leaf fuzz the banks of the Beaulieu River. The foliage wall is pierced occasionally by inviting, narrow inlets through the trailing branches, or by the lawns of big houses where nobody seems to live. Songbirds call, gulls wheel overhead and an egret flaps up from the tidal marsh between the trees and the main channel. The water shines in the sun, and it feels softly warm when I trail my fingers in it. My kayak drifts as I rest and bask.
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Jane Austen, A Beloved Friend in Chawton
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April 20, 2011 |
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It took a life-threatening illness and months of enforced convalescence to finally arrive at the home of a much loved friend. I came to the red brick house on a winter day. Even though I'd grown up less than an hour's drive away, it was the first time I'd been to Jane Austen's house in the English county of Hampshire.
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The Persuasive And Provincial Jane Austen
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November 27, 2007 |
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Jane Austen was a provincial lady who wrote about the provincial society she knew so well. Yet in spite of her curiously restricted life, during which she never married and rarely left the company of her affectionate family, she used sharp wit and irony to expose the snobbery and hypocrisy she witnessed in that society.
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